Can such a thing be? Is it possible for a man to go through life
carrying this atmosphere constantly with him? Can the continuity which,
as I remarked, is expressed by the original accurately rendered, be kept
up through an ordinary life that has all manner of work to do, or are we
only to 'hear the joyful sound,' now and then, at rare intervals, on set
occasions, answering to these ancient feasts? Which of the two is it to
be, dear brethren? There is no need whatever why any amount of hard
work, or outward occupations of the most secular character, or any
amount of distractions, should break for us the continuity of that
consciousness and of that experience. We may carry God with us wherever
we go, if only we remember that where we cannot carry Him with us we
ought not to go. We may carry Him with us into all the dusty roads of
life; we may always walk on the sunny side of the street if we like. We
may always bear our own sunshine with us. And although we are bound to
be diligent in business, and some of us have had to take a heavy lift of
a great deal of hard work, and much of it apparently standing in no sort
of relation to our religious life, yet for all that it is possible to
bend all to this one direction, and to make everything a means of
bringing us nearer to God and fuller of the conscious enjoyment of His
presence. And if we have not learned to do that with our daily work,
then our daily work is a curse to us. If we have allowed it to become so
absorbing or distracting as that it dims and darkens our sense of the
divine Presence, then it is time for us to see what is wrong in the
method or in the amount of work which is thus darkening our consciences.
I know it is hard, I know that an absolute attainment of such an ideal
is perhaps beyond us, but I know that we can approach--I was going to
say infinitely, but a better word is indefinitely--nearer it than any of
us have ever yet done. As the psalm goes on to say in the next clause,
it is possible for us to 'rejoice in His Name all the day.' Ay, even at
your tasks, and at your counters, and in your kitchens, and in my study,
it is possible for us; and if our hearts are what and where they ought
to be, the possibility will be realised. Earthly duty has no necessary
effect of veiling the consciousness of God.
Nor is there any reason why our troubles, sorrows, losses, solitude
should darken that sunshine. I know that that is hard, too, perhaps
harder than the other. It is more difficult to have a sense of the
sunshine of the divine Presence shining through the clouds of disaster
and sorrow than even it is to have it shining through the dust that is
raised by traffic and secular occupation. But it _is_ possible. There is
nothing in all the sky so grand as clouds smitten by sunshine, and the
light is never so glorious as when it is flashed back from them and dyes
their piled bosoms with all celestial colours. There is no experience of
God's Presence so blessed as that of a man who, in the midst of sorrow,
has yet with him the assurance of the Father's friendship and favour and
love, and so can say 'as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.' This sunshine
shines in the foulest corners, and the most thunder-laden clouds only
flash back its glories in new forms.
There is only one thing that breaks the continuity of that blessedness,
and that is our own sin. We carry our own weather with us, whether we
will or no, and we can bring winter into the middle of summer by
flinging God away from us, and summer into the midst of winter by
grappling Him to our hearts. There is only one thing that necessarily
breaks our sense of His Presence, and that is that our hearts should
turn away from His face. A man can work hard and yet feel that God is
with him. A man can be weighed upon by many distresses and yet feel that
God is with him and loves him; but a man cannot commit the least tiny
sin and love it, and feel at the same time that God is with him. The
heart is like a sensitive photographic plate, it registers the
variations in the sunshine; and the one hindrance that makes it
impossible for God's light to fall upon my soul with the assurance of
friendship and the sense of sweetness, is that I should be hugging some
evil to my heart. It is not the dusty highway of life nor the dark vales
of weeping and of the shadow of death through which we sometimes have to
pass that make it impossible for this sunlight to pour down upon us, but
it is our gathering round ourselves of the poisonous mists of sin
through which that light cannot pierce; or if it pierce, pierces
transformed and robbed of all its beauty.
III. Let me note next the blessedness which draws out the Psalmist's
rapturous exclamation.
The same phrase is employed in one of the other psalms, which, I think,
bears in its contents the confirmation of the attribution of it to
David. When he was fleeing before his rebellious son, at the very lowest
ebb of his fortunes, away on the uplands of Moab, a discrowned king, a
fugitive in danger of death at every moment, he sang a psalm in which
these words occur: 'There be many that say, Who will show us any good?'
'Lord, lift up the light of Thy countenance upon us'; and then follows,
'Thou hast put gladness into my heart more than when their corn and wine
abound.' The speech of the many, 'Who will show us any good?' is
contrasted with the prayer of the one, 'Lord, lift Thou up the light of
Thy countenance upon us.' That is blessedness. It is the only thing that
makes the heart to be at rest. It is the only thing that makes life
truly worth living, the only thing that brings sweetness which has no
after taint of bitterness and breeds no fear of its passing away. To
have that unsetting sunshine streaming down upon my open heart, and to
carry about with me whithersoever I go, like some melody from hidden
singers sounding in my ears, the Name and the Love of my Father
God--that and that only, brother, is true rest and abiding blessedness.
There are many other joys far more turbulent, more poignant, but they
all pass. Many of them leave a nauseous taste in the mouth when they are
swallowed; all of them leave us the poorer for having had them and
having them no more. For one who is not a Christian I do not know that
it _is_
'Better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.'
But for those to whom God's Face is as a Sun, life in all its
possibilities is blessed; and there is no blessedness besides. So let us
keep near Him, 'walking in the light,' in our changeful days, 'as He is
in the light' in His essential and unalterable being; and that light
will be to us all which it is taken in Scripture to symbolise--knowledge
and joy and purity; and in us, too, there will be 'no darkness at all.'
But there is one last word that I must say, and that is that a possible
terror is intertwined with this blessedness. The next psalm to this
says, with a kind of tremulous awe in the Psalmist's voice: 'Thou hast
set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy
countenance.' In that sense all of us, good and bad, lovers of God and
those that are careless about Him, walk all the day long in the light of
His face, and He sees and marks all our else hidden evil. It needs
something more than any of us can do to make the thought that we do
stand in the full glaring of that great searchlight, not turned
occasionally but focussed steadily on us individually, a joy and a
blessing to us. And what we need is offered us when we read, 'His
countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength, and I fell at His
feet as dead. And He laid His hand upon me and said, Fear not! I am He
that liveth and was dead; and behold! I am alive for ever more.' If we
put our poor trust in the Eternal Light that was manifest in Christ,
then we shall walk in the sunshine of His face on earth, and that lamp
will burn for us in the darkness of the grave and lead us at last into
the ever-blazing centre of the Sun itself.